License To Love
Part 4:
He awoke to the sound of a familiar, albeit alarmed voice. “Clark! Honey! Are you all right?”
Irritated, he blinked into the harsh light of day. His mom’s worried face came into focus. He frowned. How had he ended up here? With a slight shake of his head, he tried to clear the last cobwebs of sleep from his mind. She knelt beside him, surreptitiously checking him for injuries or anything else that had resulted in his unannounced arrival.
“Mom?” he muttered, confused. As he took in her anxious face, he felt the need to reassure her. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.”
A relieved smile spread across her face and she reached out to help him up. He raised his brow, but took her small hand, more for the purpose of humoring her than anything else.
Looking around, he realized that he was lying in his parent’s backyard garden, somewhere between growing carrots and potatoes. He scrambled to a sitting position and scratched his head. Had his subconscious decided that a visit with his parents was in order after all? The sun had already risen high in the sky. It had to be almost noon. The events of last night came crashing down on him with a vengeance, complete with a very guilty conscience. He cringed.
“You’re sure you're fine, honey?” Martha asked sympathetically.
“Uh huh. Physically, anyway,” Clark replied, subdued.
He got to his feet and brushed some soil and dust off his clothing. Then he ran a nervous hand through his hair, wondering how he should explain how he'd fallen asleep next to his mother's carrots.
Martha watched him quietly before she pulled him into a firm embrace.
"It's great to have you here," she said. "Though the next time you need a place to sleep, you're welcome to come inside. No need to take the vegetable patch." She took a step back and looked at him with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Now let's get you some breakfast."
Clark frowned. "Breakfast? Isn't it a bit late for that?"
"I'm guessing you haven't had anything to eat since yesterday," Martha stated.
"Might have been a bit longer than that," Clark admitted sheepishly.
"See? The first meal of the day is traditionally called breakfast." She winked at him. "And now, come on. How do pancakes sound for starters?"
"Heavenly," Clark replied.
Her presence was incredibly comforting. It was a strange thing, really. When he wasn't there, he dreaded visiting his parents. There were so many things he was yet afraid to tell them, particularly about his time at Bureau 39 and what they’d done to him with the green crystal.
But whenever he was in Smallville, he wondered what he'd worried about in the first place. Though she'd missed most of his teenage years and young adult life, his mom still instinctively knew when he was ready to talk and when he wasn't. Like now, when she picked him out of the vegetable patch and offered him breakfast, no questions asked. He wanted to hug her, just because she was so understanding. He felt guilty because she took so much of her kindness, but still couldn’t bring himself to open up to her completely.
He followed his mother into the kitchen. Martha gestured for him to take a seat at the table and poured him a cup of coffee. Then she went to prepare the pancakes.
Clark took a sip of his beverage and closed his eyes, savoring the taste. “Where is Dad?”
“Out on the field, looking after the crops,” Martha replied. “You should go out and see him after you’ve had breakfast. He’s been meaning to ask for your help fixing the fences for a while now. He’ll be elated that you’re here.” She paused and looked at him. “That is, if you have the time.”
Clark smiled at her, another pang of guilt creeping up on him. “I’ll make the time. That’s the least I can do.”
For a while, Martha was busy making pancakes. She chatted away, informing Clark about the local gossip. He leaned back and enjoyed this sense of normalcy, drinking his coffee, talking to his mother. It was almost as if he’d just come for a regular visit. He supposed that she would eventually want to know what had brought him here. But strangely, he was no longer as terrified of that part of the conversation as he’d been when he’d first found himself in Smallville.
Quietly, he waited for the other shoe to drop. But it didn’t for a while. Martha placed a stack of pancakes and a bottle of syrup in front of him and joined him at the table.
“How are things with you?” she asked. “Making any progress on that plan you won’t tell me more about?”
Clark smiled to himself. “Yeah, actually. It seems to work. I promise, I’ll tell you more about it once I’m sure that I won’t be changing my mind.” He paused, thoughtfully. “Though, to be honest, after last night, it might be a moot point anyway.”
He froze, his heart beating in his throat. Did he actually want to talk about what had happened? Suddenly, the pancakes tasted stale. His mother watched him, her brows slightly raised, as if she was waiting for him to volunteer the information. But where could he start? How much did he want to reveal of his dream and the brief moments of intimacy between him and Lois that had followed.
He finished his meal, while his mom patiently listened to his continuing silence. When he was done, Clark picked up his plate and the cutlery and went over to the sink to clean his dishes.
“Are you going to tell me how you ended up sleeping in the vegetable patch?” Martha finally asked.
Clark kept his eyes firmly trained on the plate in his hands, while he ran the sponge over it. “I don’t know how I ended up there, exactly. I was flying, trying to tire myself out, trying to forget…”
He heard her sigh. “Did you have a fight with Lois?”
Clark shook his head. “It wasn’t really a fight.” He put his dishes on the drying rack and leaned against the counter, letting out a small groan. “She is mad at me, that’s for sure. And she has every right to be. I behaved like a world-class idiot.”
Clark took one of the towels and dried off the sink. Somehow, without a conscious thought, the words just started pouring out of him. “When I went to her yesterday, I was already dead on my feet. Lois had given me a key to her apartment. I didn’t mean to, but somehow I ended up falling asleep on her couch before she’d even returned from work.”
He straightened and went back to join his mother at the table. For a while, he couldn’t continue. His thoughts were a jumble, and he didn’t know how to put into words what had happened. He really didn’t want to tell his mom about every gory detail. Martha, it seemed, didn’t mind his silence. She just watched him quietly, a sympathetic smile on her lips.
“I had a horrible nightmare,” he admitted hoarsely. “Lois helped me work through it.” Clark’s gut twisted into a knot. That had been the easy part. He swallowed hard. “I ended up admitting that I love her. She said she loves me, too.”
“That’s wonderful, honey,” Martha cheered.
“Yeah, it is,” Clark said quietly. He tried to smile, though he knew very well that it had to look awfully forced. “We kissed, really kissed for the first time. It was wonderful, I was so elated…” His voice cracked.
“Then what are you doing here?” Martha probed gently.
He cleared his throat and kneaded his hands. A sudden restlessness took hold of him. Clark got up and started to pace.
“After the nightmare, I was trapped in a pretty dark corner of my mind. While we kissed, I started to float. I was so happy…. I got so carried away that I lost control over my powers! I panicked.” He raked his hand through his hair. With slumped shoulders, he went back to his chair and sank down on it, cradling his head in his hands. “I completely lost my head and ran out on her. She tried to talk about it, but I just ran out on her.” He heaved a sigh.
“Awww, Clark,” his mother whispered. She reached for his hand and squeezed it lightly. “Don’t you think she knows you well enough now to understand why you reacted the way you did?”
He cracked a self-conscious smile. “I guess so. I can’t even begin to understand how she manages to be so endlessly patient with me. She’s not usually like that, you know?”
Martha chuckled. “Maybe that’s because she really loves you?”
She got up and gave his shoulders a gentle squeeze, then started to rub his back. It was oddly comforting. Clark closed his eyes, suddenly feeling as if he was ten years old again. He inhaled his mother’s soft scent, marveling at the fact that somehow she had managed to stay mostly the same wonderful person she’d always been.
Clark stared at his hands. “I don’t know what to do now. Apologize, I suppose. But what then? There’s still the issue that I lost control over my powers when I kissed her."
"Powers?" Martha echoed. "Was it just the floating or did you inadvertently use other powers as well?"
Clark let out a slow breath. "Just the floating. Still, I can’t have that happen again. The floating itself might not have been so bad, but there are other powers far more dangerous than that. I wouldn’t want to vaporize her with a smoldering look.”
Clark could see that his mother was biting back a laugh, though she did her very best to keep a straight face. “Is that likely to happen, honey?”
“I don’t know!” he cried. “The truth is that I don’t know the first thing about kissing, or lovemaking or things like that.”
Martha raised her brows. “Now that can’t be true. I distinctly remember sitting you down and having ‘The Talk’ with you a few months before Bureau 39 took you away from us.”
Now, it was her voice cracking and for a moment, she let Clark see all the pain she’d suffered in the years of his absence, never knowing where he was. He reached out to lightly squeeze his mother's hand, quietly trying to reassure her how much he, too, had missed her.
“I do know what is supposed to happen and how," Clark felt his cheeks flush. "And it was a good thing you told me all those things. I don’t think that Trask or General Newcomb would have bothered to inform me if you hadn’t. Come to think of it, they never really asked if I knew.”
For a while, they sat in silence. It seemed that both of them needed a moment to compose themselves. Clark took another sip of his coffee, while eventually Martha got up to pour herself a cup. She smiled at him when she returned with the steaming coffee.
“Remember when you were a kid and your powers really started to show...” she started but trailed off as she sat down next to him.
“Yeah,” Clark muttered, a bit confused. He wasn’t entirely sure where this was going.
Martha took a sip and sat her cup down. “We tried to figure out what triggered your powers and then you worked on controlling them. Now, I don’t know about the flying, because that happened later. But your heat vision developed while you were still with us. If I remember correctly, we found out that it was triggered by anger.”
Clark harrumphed uneasily. “It was. I was so angry with Dad, because he wouldn’t let me join the baseball team. At the time, my strength was developing in bouts and I never knew when I’d have to work on regaining control over it again. Dad was right, of course, but all I could see was that I couldn’t join the team. I yelled at him and turned to leave and all of a sudden I had set the stack of wood on fire he’d chopped just an hour before.”
Martha nodded, her expression a little wistful. “Jonathan was so sorry that he had to deny you joining the team. But I didn’t mean to start a trip down memory lane. My point is that your heat vision was triggered by anger, then.”
“It’s not anymore,” Clark disagreed. “I don’t need to be angry to use it.”
She laid a hand on his arm. “I know. But I’m guessing that if you should ever lose control over that power, it will be when you’re angry. Do you think that it’s likely you’re going to be angry with Lois when you kiss her?”
Clark looked at her sheepishly. “I guess not.”
“Now to the flying,” Martha said with a nod. “What triggered that? How did you first find out that you could fly?”
“One night, I woke up floating in my sleep,” Clark replied. “There was no emotional component that I’m aware of.”
“You’re sure?” Martha’s eyes twinkled with mischief. “No pleasant dreams to speak of? Wet dreams specifically?”
Clark’s cheeks grew hot with embarrassment. “Mom!”
“You do have them, don’t you?” she asked, completely ignoring his discomfort.
“Yeah, I do have them,” Clark admitted hoarsely. “Now, could we please change the topic?”
“All right, all right.” Martha laughed and held up her hands. "I don’t mean to embarrass you. What I'm trying to say is that perhaps the flying is connected to the way you felt when you were kissing her. That you lose control over your flying ability doesn’t have to mean the same is going to happen with your other powers.”
Clark gave his mother a weak smile and simply nodded. He didn’t know what to say to that. Once again, there was the flicker of hope burning in his chest. But he was wary, afraid that he'd just have to face yet more disappointment if he tried to go down that path.
Clark stared off into space. Could that actually be the reason he’d lost control? Had the most intense erotic experience of his life caused him to fly, just because the flying was triggered by these kind of emotions? He wasn’t sure. In fact, he didn’t remember having any erotic fantasies prior to meeting Lois.
“What do you suggest?” he asked eventually.
Martha shrugged. "Experiment a little, I suppose. And don't just decide it's not possible before you've even tried. Tell Lois about your worries, and then you can decide together how you go on from there."
“I don't know, Mom,” Clark whispered. “Lois is not nearly scared enough of my powers.”
"I think you're scared enough for the both of you, Clark,” Martha said softly. She took his hands in hers. “Remember? I was there when your powers first developed. And whenever a new one showed up, you had little to no control. Yet, you never hurt anyone. You worked day and night to control it.”
“But I know you were scared,” Clark muttered, uncomfortably. He bit his lip. Until now, he’d never mentioned it. “I could smell it.” He cast his eyes down, not able to quite look at his Mom.
From the corner of his eyes, he saw Martha’s surprise. “Oh, honey. But I was scared for you, never of you. All these strange things you could do. I just knew it would be impossible to hide them from Bureau 39. And I knew that they'd come to take my son away from me.”
Clark swallowed hard and hung his head. “I’m sorry I caused you so much pain.”
Martha gasped. “Clark, no!” She ran her hand along his cheek and tilted his chin to make him look at her. “It’s not your fault. None of this is. Taking you in was the best thing that ever happened to us. And getting you back after such a long time…” Her voice cracked as tears slipped down her cheeks. “We can’t get back the years we lost, but we can make the most of what we have now.” She kissed his forehead and then slipped her hands around his shoulder to embrace him.
He leaned into her hug and for a while, neither of them said anything. Clark was just content to stay that way and once again be able to talk about anything that was on his mind.
Eventually, he whispered. “You and Lois both place so much trust in me. What if I don’t deserve that? What if you’re wrong about me?”
“My, you’re really in a dark corner of your mind,” Martha said with a resolute shake of her head. “We trust you, because we know you better than anyone else. I believe we know you better than you do yourself.”
“You don’t know everything about me,” he argued quietly.
“No, we don’t,” Martha amended. She gave his forearm a reassuring squeeze. “But I’m sure you’ll find the courage to tell us everything. And until then, you need to let us help you trust yourself. Now let’s forget about the past and let’s see how we can fix your future with Lois.”
Clark let out a small sigh. "But what if it actually is impossible?"
Martha pursed her lips. "Then it's still not just your decision to end your relationship, Clark. At least not alone. This concerns both of you, so Lois should have a say in this as well." She took a large sip of her coffee and leaned back in her chair. “I never told you this, but when I learned that I couldn’t have children, I was devastated. I was mourning the child I’d never have, but I also felt bad for denying Jonathan the right to ever become a father. After all, it hadn’t been his fault. And I told him that I’d leave him if he wanted me to.” A rueful smile played around her lips. “He was pretty furious with me for even offering such a thing. He said he loved me, regardless of whether we would have kids one day. Talk to Lois, I’m pretty sure she would feel the same way. If you really love her, don’t try to make her decisions for her.”
Clark pinched the bridge of his nose as he listened to his mother’s words. With a pang of guilt, he realized that he really hadn’t stopped to wonder what he’d feel like if Lois had acted the way he had last night.
He ran a hand through his hair. “I still wish I knew a little more about love and intimacy.”
Martha grinned. “Perhaps, it would be better to ask your father's advice. Being a man, he might know more about those things from your perspective than I do."
Clark grimaced."I'm not exactly a man, either."
Martha frowned and folded her arms in front of her chest. "Clark Kent, I changed your diapers more times than I care to count. I'm fairly sure that you are a man."
Clark gave her a sheepish grin. "Sorry, Mom."
She looked at him sternly. "You better be. And now off you go. Your poor father still needs help with those fences."
It was afternoon by the time Clark was done helping his dad and headed back to Metropolis. Together they had repaired the fences, and there had been quite a few other things that needed his attention too. While working, he'd spent most of the time agonizing over how to apologize to Lois for his boneheaded behavior. A couple of times, he’d also tried to work up the courage to ask his Dad about intimacy and how to deal with raging hormones. But in the end, he had been too embarrassed to try. And what good would it do to ask him, if the main problem remained the same? After all, his Dad couldn’t fly.
Shortly, before he’d left Smallville, he’d tried to call Lois, but she hadn’t picked up her phone at the Daily Planet. Perhaps she was chasing another story. He’d hoped to clear the air as soon as possible, but obviously that had to wait. It was already getting dark as Clark saw the skyline of Metropolis. He wondered whether he should try to visit Lois at the Daily Planet or if she’d already be heading home. But before he had a chance to make up his mind, he picked up the sound of sirens and screams.
There was a large apartment building on fire and people were still trapped. His stomach clenched in dread, then he changed his course.
To be continued...
Last edited by bakasi; 06/21/22 11:07 AM.
